Commentary

David Copperfield has spent his life mastering unbelievable, otherworldly illusions that take people’s breath away, and that combined with international stardom can make you forget that he is, in fact, a human being like the rest of us. For me the most poignant moment in Margie Goldsmith’s interview with the magnificent illusionist comes when he tells her the story about his finger being severed during a botched rope trick. A surgeon reattached it, and it grew back. “That,” he says, “is magic.”

When it comes to song topics, love is number one, but travel may be a close second. In a gazillion tunes, it seems, someone is hopping on or off a train, boat or plane. (There was even a Dionne Warwick hit called “Trains and Boats and Planes.”) And in many other songs, they’re jumping in their cars or thumbing a ride in someone else’s.

“Within the next decade we’ll be flying people to Australia from New York in about two hours, developing spaceships that will cross continents outside the Earth’s atmosphere and then pop them back into the atmosphere. Then we’ll move on to much bigger commercial jets [traveling] at many times the speed of sound.”

Bizav boosters should aggressively rebut critics.
Two recent cases from the Los Angeles area highlight the dangers of not aggressively firing back at general aviation critics, especially those in government.

Sir Richard Branson is the only person we’ve put on our cover twice, and I can’t think of a better choice for that distinction. In 2008, when we first featured him, a poll in Britain had just named him No. 2 on a list of people parents would want their children to look up to, second only to “a family member” and ahead of both Jesus Christ and Nelson Mandela.

Some of my favorite new and old television series are available on disc, which means you can enjoy them in flight. This alphabetical list of 15 recommended DVD and Blu-ray sets includes something for everyone—comedies, dramas, cop shows, even a couple of documentaries. What they have in common is quality.

Some private flyers seem to want to remain “under the radar.” They like that they can avoid interaction with the general public by leaving and arriving via inconspicuous FBOs, and they travel on unmarked jets, sometimes with the protection of the National Business Aviation Association’s Blocked Aircraft Registration Request program.

Unless you hang your hat in Delaware or New Hampshire or live in one of the few countries that don’t assess sales tax, you probably hand money to the government almost every time you buy something. In many U.S.

John McCarthy dreamed about starting Business Jet Traveler long before he began working for our parent company, AIN Publications, in 1984. In fact, the concept originally came to him many years prior when he was the advertising manager for Piper Aircraft.

Quote/Unquote

“What we need to do is always lean into the future. When the world changes around you and when it changes against you—what used to be a tail wind is now a head wind—you have to lean into that and figure out what to do because complaining isn’t a strategy.
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